Firm Profiles

15 young firms to watch: 5468796 architecture, winnipeg

Verbatim

5468796 architecture—Johanna Hurme

“The hope [when we launched the firm] was to try to do something that was pushing the boundaries and the edges of design that we’ve typically seen in Winnipeg. We found a lot of clients and people were hungry to see something different in the marketplace and that’s what we’ve been trying to pursue ever since.”

“Our mode of work is such that there are 12 of us sitting around a single table where we discuss ideas openly and everybody contributes to all the design work that comes out of the office. In a way it’s that collaboration and relying on 12 heads as opposed to a single one that really generates those new ideas.”

“I still find that people are generally skeptical [about living in a multifamily residence] if they have a family. If they have kids, they sort of assume that they should live in their own house somewhere. Living greener, so living in more dense environments is a trend that we’ll be seeing more and more of.”

“It takes a lot to get an architect involved in a house-scale project and it’s often quite expensive for clients to be able to engage full architectural services. But then you can go to a custom builder and get plans drawn up by someone and people assume that’s the same service, whereas we really try to dig deep and figure out who these people are and try to interpret their mode of living.”

You may know them for the Bond Tower, a narrow, 11-story mixed-use office complex on the boards for Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. But 5468796 architecture also is making inroads into multifamily with projects that renegotiate the category’s conventional living arrangements and strike a contrast with the conservative nature of the region’s built environment. One recent project features a publicly accessible courtyard in place of a fence as a fluid boundary, and another, which finished first-phase construction in 2011, segments its 18 three- and four-story townhouses with an architectural wrap.

“There didn’t seem to be a lot going on in terms of pushing the edge of design in our context here,” says co-founder Johanna Hurme. Hurme, a Helsinki, Finland, native, and co-founder Sasa Radulovic, who hails from Sarajevo in the former Yugoslavia, think an outsider’s perspective might be one factor in their breaking the mold.

Upon launching the firm in May 2007, Hurme says they received a commission daily for the first three weeks. Now, the 12-person team goes by a name that gives every indication of a highly collaborative ethos. “When we first incorporated the company, 5468796 was the number we were handed,” Hurme explains. “We’d rather not be named after ourselves ... everybody in the group can identify under the numbers.”

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About the Author

Hallie Busta is an associate editor of products and technology at ARCHITECT. She holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from Northwestern University's Medill school and a LEED Green Associate credential. Previously, she wrote about building-material sales and distribution at Hanley Wood. Follow her on Twitter at @HallieBusta.